Tech Tips: Converting Music from YouTube Videos to MP3s

Let’s say you find a video on YouTube that features a song you’d like to listen to on a CD, in your iPod, etc.  Here’s what you do (this works on both Macs and PCs)…

1. Find the web address (URL) of the YouTube video.  It’s usually listed right on the YouTube page you’re watching or just grab it from the browser.

2.  If you do a web search for a website that can download YouTube videos, you’ll probably find a bunch of sites, such as: http://keepvid.com/

3. Enter the URL of your YouTube video at the above website, per the website”s instructions.

4. Choose to download the video into a non-Flash format, such as a .mpg file.

5. Open the downloaded video file in Quicktime Pro.

6. Export the video file to an audio file, such as a .wav file. Or just try importing the .mpg video file into iTunes and skip to step 8.

7. Import the new audio file into iTunes.

8. In iTunes under the Advanced tab, click on “Create mp3 version.” You may need to change your iTunes preferences if you do not see such an option.

9. Make sure you have permission to posses this new mp3 audio file.

OR…

If you have a pre-amp or other such audio interface, and if you do, you’ve probably figured out this cheat.

1. Insert a cable with two male ends from the headphone jack of your computer into the input jack of your pre-amp.

2. Record the audio using Audacity or a similar audio recording program.

3. Convert to mp3 using iTunes as mentioned above.

4. Make sure you have permission to posses this new mp3 audio file.